


Waiting in the Weeds

by Whreflections



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Courting Rituals, Creature John Stilinski, Creature Stiles Stilinski, Enfield, F/M, Good Peter, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Steter Week, Steter Week 2019, and the stetopher will be the insinuation of possibility for the future, the petopher is only referenced and in the past, this is steter heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 03:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20038990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: Just like his dad, Stiles is an enfield- a type of shapeshifting creature that is capable of taking three forms, one during the peak of each phase of the moon.  Individuals like him have been sought after for thousands of years; they've had statues made of them, they've been renowned generals and leaders.  They've shaped history, and protected their chosen packs for generations, typically mating with the alpha to provide a strong pair bond to head the family.John Stilinski is the absolute embodiment of everything an enfield should be- and everything his son isn't.  It's hard to feel fearsome when there isn't a single form you take that would be too large to be picked up by a frail human.  Fortunately for Stiles, Peter isn't looking for muscle.





	Waiting in the Weeds

**Author's Note:**

> SO. My original plan was to come up with an unusual shapeshifter form/creature Stiles form and write a medium length fic about them that would be complete before steter week. 
> 
> I did accomplish creating a shapeshifter form I haven't seen before, inspired by the enfield, which was a form of chimera used in heraldry. They were often a combination of lion, wolf, and eagle, or similar animals, so for the purposes of this verse, an enfield is a shifter who changes into a different form for each phase of the moon- there's some variation, but typically one form is a bird of prey, one is a wolf/large canine or feline-like, and one is fox/small canine or feline-like. 
> 
> This fic is not finished, however, lol Even though I loved the idea, it was coming along much slower than expected- so slow, in fact, that I had basically written off having the first chapter done before steter week ended...and then this evening I was just like "nah, bet you can finish it tonight"
> 
> And so I did, and here it is ^^ Happy Steter Week, everyone :)

Stiles only checked the app out of habit.

After over two years, he had no expectations; he hadn’t had any when he graduated. His blood made him an enfield, but he was never going to be the pack guardian anyone would choose. It didn’t matter how much magic he could do or how clever he was—he could make it as an emissary, maybe, but no pack Alpha was going to go looking for an enfield guardian who might be qualified as an emissary when they could just cut straight to someone who’d trained to be an emissary. He was firmly in a grey no man’s land, and he knew it; he’d come to terms with it. Hell, he honestly liked working with his dad—not that he wouldn’t have preferred having a pack of his own to protect, but he wasn’t unhappy. He wasn’t miserable; he wasn’t wallowing—he’d gotten that out of his system as a teenager, once he’d shifted into all three forms for the first time and realized he wasn’t going to be anyone’s first choice.

So sure, he registered with the Available Enfield Registry, and he kept up his contact information, but he fully expected to be deleting spam and trolls for the rest of his life. That’s probably why when he did get a real message, he startled so dramatically his phone took a nosedive into his coffee mug.

Well. He can blame that for half the reason, at least; the rest was natural God given spastic talent. 

By the time he sat down across from his dad at his desk, he still hadn’t read the message, but he was able to plop his phone dramatically down on the desk, taking a time-out in a bag of sand.

“Guess what?” He couldn’t keep his excitement down; it bubbled out from his voice and spilled over into his fingers, tapping on the edge of his second coffee—this one in a paper cup, rather than his red D20 mug. That one was currently still a quarter full of coffee, and taking its own time-out on the ledge over the kitchen sink. 

“You’re not convincing me to get a new phone with you; mine works just fine—“

“No, no; it’s not like that. She’ll be just fine; Death Valley sand and a little charm works way better than a bag of rice.” His phone lay screen down on a little miniature dune, his case facing up. Due to the enchantment that allowed the art of the case to mimic the battery life of his phone, while it was powered down the mermaid on it slept untroubled, the tips of her koi-like tail fluttering with the lazy current, white hair nearly covering her face.

“Uh-huh.” His dad leaned back in his chair, eyeing the bag with a sip of his own coffee. “So if you’re not here to try to talk me into a new phone—“

“I got a request.” Stiles said it so fast it was almost one word; he only paused after to lean in closer. In setting the cup down on his dad’s desk, coffee lurched dangerously close to the rim. “Like, a real request to meet with an alpha about being their enfield. It wasn’t a bot; I just caught enough of it to see it was legit and then I might have gotten a little too excited and my phone went into my coffee—“

“Ah, kid—“

Stiles waved him off, too focused to pause for his dad’s fond irritation. He was long used it. “—I swear to God; it was real. He had a profile and everything; it was a full on request.”

“A request we can’t read until your phone’s out of Death Valley, I’m guessing.”

“Well, yeah, but in an hour or two we _can_ read it, so I thought I’d wait here instead of going out this morning—expedites the part where you background check him and find the illegal wolfsbane variant charge from when he was 15 and I argue that isn’t relevant and you say you want us to meet here in the office to intimidate him in case he’s dangerous.”

“We could also expedite that process by me saying right now that whoever this alpha is, if he wants you to come live with his pack the very least he can do is meet you here and see the work you’ve been doing, and talk to both of us at the house over dinner,” his dad said. His smile was in the wrinkles at his eyes, though, and Stiles wasn’t fooled. He could smell how pleased he was; he could damn near feel his pride. He’d never failed to let Stiles know he was proud of him; he wasn’t that kind of father—but still, it would mean something to both of them if this worked out that couldn’t happen if Stiles never had a pack of his own. It was in their nature, as deep and old as the magic that tied them to the phases of the moon. It was only right for there to come a time that his father’s pack didn’t suit him, that he belonged somewhere alien and new, forging a bond with ground his parents had never touched. 

“We could, but that would be so much less fun.”

“I think you’re trying to get out of morning rounds.”

“If you weren’t my boss I’d call that slander, but since you are I’d like to point to my excellent service record—“

“Yeah, yeah. It’s excellent; I’m well aware. Why don’t you take the folder on the Davies’ land dispute over to the couch and start drafting a solution? That should take you at least an hour.”

The urge to point out that he’d gotten nothing lower than an A- in any of his Pack Land Management classes rose in this throat, and died, caught up in a swell of butterflies. In one way or another, he’d been training for this almost his entire life, but there was a difference in being ready, and facing the reality. In another hour, he’d know the name and land of the alpha who wanted him to come and serve as the face of his pack’s presence to the world. A protector. In the old days, they’d have stitched a conglomerate of his three shifted forms onto a flag, and called him the pack herald. 

Stiles had tried a few times as a boy to draw what his flag might have looked like, only to give up in disgust. It was so goddamn strange, to be stuck in the position where he was made for exactly one thing, and not made for it, all at the same time. 

Stiles collapsed onto the couch, and left his phone on his dad’s desk, the mermaid’s tail still riding the currents. 

*****

Just like his mother’s wolf, his dad’s shifted forms were in some of Stiles’ earliest memories. There was a picture in the photo album his mom had made that he kept in his nightstand of himself as a baby, one hand on the toy keyboard he was just learning to smack, one hand reaching out toward the forehead of the maned wolf bowing down to watch him. 

In another he was older, flat on his belly on the driveway, ready to roll a roller hockey ball for John to chase. It had to have been close to the first quarter moon; his father perched in his bird of prey form and gazing down with the sharp eyes of a secretary bird at his son’s hands. They had played that game and others like it so many times. No matter how dangerous he was to enemies of the pack, no matter how busy, he never failed in any form to make time to play with his son, to court his wife. 

He had gone after her in the old way, courting her as formally as people like him had courted their chosen alphas for centuries. In his dad’s room Stiles knew that if he looked even now, years later, he’d find the pine box where his mother had kept everything John had given her when he courted her—a piece of all three of his forms, and a gift offered by each. His mother had shown it to Stiles when he was little, but the importance of it hadn’t sunk in until he was 11, and for the first time in his life the quarter moon had him shaking, burning with fever, fighting the urge to clamor up onto his dresser to find safety in height. 

Stiles had thought for so long he would be his mother’s heir; everyone had. He was the only child of the alpha, and though the genetics of supernatural creatures were often more magic than science, it was rare for an enfield to be born to the alpha before a werewolf was. When he healed easily but didn’t yet shift, everyone had suspected he was just a late bloomer—but then the fever took over on a first quarter moon, and there was no uncertainty anymore. He was the only child of the alpha, but he was his father’s son, tied not just to the full moon but to all its phases, bound to the earth, and the wilderness, and the sky. 

Enfields were rare; they always had been, and the combination of rarity, diversity, and strength had made them highly prized. It wasn’t just a matter of enhanced security to have one in your pack, but a matter of honor. What he was, what had happened to him the day he began to change was worth celebrating—even though it also meant the next alpha would be from his Aunt Rhea’s line rather than Claudia’s. Deaton had told her long ago she would have no more children, not after the spell she had inadvertently tripped when Stiles was still young had left her cursed.

Stiles worried still sometimes that it had mattered to her on some level, that she had been disappointed that the only child she’d been able to bear was born unable to take her power and continue her pack, but if she was she’d hidden it well from him, buried deep. To Stiles directly, she’d never shown anything but pride. 

That first night when he’d felt like his skin was searing off, she’d felt his forehead and smelled the beginnings of the change long before it would break over him, and bring relief with it. To wait for that crest, she had talked for hours to him about his future to settle him, old stories and traditions he’d heard a hundred times that had never seemed relevant since he’d expected to be like her. If he closed his eyes shut tight in the dark on a sleepless night, he could still see the deep, brick red of her eyes when she had tilted his chin up, her face as serious as he’d ever seen it. 

_Something I want you to learn now before anyone tells you different is that you have choices. It might not always seem like it, but when you have a pack of your own, your relation to the alpha is yours to decide. Your father courted me because he wanted to, but he didn’t have to. You’ll hear over and over that most enfields mate with the alpha, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t. If you don’t want them, you don’t have to do anything. You aren’t obligated. That’s why all this—this old fashioned tradition that shouldn’t be necessary is still worth doing. You don’t have to mate with them—but if you want to, it’s worth it to make it clear. _

Her hand had pressed to the open edge of the box, the inside cradling her most prized possessions. He could remember the cut of the edge against his own sweaty fingers, the way they’d slipped before he gripped tighter, unwilling to sully anything inside. 

_If I had to choose, I’d keep these things over my wedding ring. Do you know why?_

Stiles had tilted his head against her shoulder, looking up at the popcorn ceiling, at the untucked fringes of her hair. He could feel the current from the vent on his ceiling more clearly than he ever had, and the sensation was strange, and distracting. Looking down, again, there was the brown shag of his carpet, the grey and white shag of his bearded collie, worrying. Her panting had been loud, and grating, and he’d felt a flash of fear toward her for a moment that wasn’t his own. 

That should have been his first indicator that something was wrong, but he was a boy, and he was sick, and his mother was talking to him. His entire life was changing. It was easier to hold on to her against the current, to squeeze the edge of the box and press close and look inside. 

It held the tail feather from a secretary bird, alongside the preserved rattle of a diamondback. Tufts of fur pulled from a shedding hyena, and a curving, beautiful antler wrapped in long dried vine. The magically preserved pawprint of a maned wolf cast in wet sand, resting on a bundle of dried and brittle grass, long stalks with seeds on the end. 

Anyone else would have looked, and seen odds and ends. 

Stiles had blinked up at her, his breath heavy, and told her that he thought he knew. _Because it’s part of dad?_

_Because it’s part of dad—and more than that, it’s what the deepest parts of him chose to give me, when they didn’t have to. Every piece in here means something to him that it doesn’t mean to me, and the meaning it takes on together is the most important part of all. Do you understand?_

He hadn’t, not then, and he hadn’t lied. He’d squirmed, and she petted his hair and soothed him anyway. 

He didn’t understand when they covered enfield mating habits in school, either. He didn’t understand when he had sex, for the first time, or when he dated his first girlfriend in college and hadn’t felt the need to rip out any feathers. Hell, when he lived with his boyfriend senior year, his fox form had actively pissed in the dude’s backpack—though in retrospect, that probably should have been a sign.

In the years before he met Peter, he never understood the box, not fully, not on any instinctive level. His dad always assured him he’d know, that the urge to provide would be there, if he let it happen. He wasn’t sure, in the way it was easy to be unsure of something never felt—but he shouldn’t have been.

After he saw Peter, it all started to make sense, even when he didn’t want it to. 

*****

Once his phone was back on, it took about three minutes for Stiles to open his messages on the Available Enfield Registry and confirm that he did absolutely have a message that wasn’t spam, and about five more to skim the short message then read it again more carefully—it took a hell of a lot longer to wrap his mind around the offer itself. 

The message was short and to the point; polite. Little of what there was to dissect wasn’t visible on the surface—

_My name is Peter Hale—if you’ve heard of the Hale pack, we aren’t it; that’s my sister, Talia. I split off from the family some years ago; we’re a small pack for now but we have land of our own land in New Mexico. I hope it helps your decision that we aren’t too far from the Stilinski pack lands._

_The pack is currently only nine members—myself and my daughter, Malia, my nephew, Derek, and his mate Braeden, Isaac, Boyd, Erica, Lydia, and Christopher. Lydia is a banshee and Braeden and Christopher are human, but you won’t be seeing him around. Still, he is part of the pack, and he would be under your protection._

_I’m impressed by the number of elective magic classes you took—we don’t have an emissary, either; we’re small enough that it shouldn’t stretch you too thin to fill that role, too. _

_I’d like to meet with you as soon as possible, if you’re interested; of course I’m willing to come to you. _

_Respectfully, _

_Peter Hale_

It sounded basic; it sounded easy. He nearly clicked through to reply without a second thought. 

After an afternoon of research with his father, however, he had enough on Peter Hale to narrow the relevant bits into four points—

He was fucking gorgeous, and unmated. There was something in his eyes that made Stiles chest turn over like a goddamn engine, like the wilder part of him was already pulling forward toward a draw it couldn’t resist. 

His pack was small, as he’d said. They didn’t have their own school; they barely filled a neighborhood. The pack _land_, however, was massive. Whether he’d obtained it by deed or by money was difficult to determine, but in either case, he’d gotten himself in control of an area that couldn’t be easy to control. 

He was filthy rich—so rich that buying up an enormous parcel of land wasn’t out of the question, or even unexpected. So rich that Stiles could find no references to figures, only vague insinuations. None of them were below 10 million. 

He was a murderer. On paper, it didn’t say this. On paper, he had killed four people, all in self or pack defense: Gerard Argent, Molly Argent, Kate Argent, and Corienne Vincente. In all cases, proof of pack defense had been sufficient enough to drop any charges. Though Stiles could find little about the first three to determine for himself, the fourth had been all over the local news in Mexico when it had happened, and he’d hardly needed Jordan’s college Spanish skills to translate the gist of it. 

After getting word that his daughter had been kept in a wire, wolfsbane lined kennel for years with little human contact, he’d come to find her, and he’d severed her mother’s head with his teeth. Some of the papers had shown it, bloodied and in the dirt, her face blurred for decency. Some of them had shown a large white wolf, blood on his mouth, a coyote pup pressed into his side to hide her face. 

Depending on where you where the story was read he was a hero or he was prone to overkill, but all sources agreed that ultimately, in the face of abuse, he’d done the right thing. 

With his own father reading and rereading across the desk from him, Stiles kicked the desk just hard enough to get his attention, his anxious edges softened by the old comfort of his father’s eyes, just beginning to bleed toward black with the approach of the full moon. 

“Well, there’s not an illegal wolfsbane variant charge—and he wasn’t actually prosecuted for any of these.” 

“No wolfsbane, just three barely explained deaths and a fourth related to extensive child abuse—that’s a hell of situation you’re going to be walking into, you know that, right? She’s barely been around humans; she’ll be a mess.”

She would, undoubtedly. 

Stiles eyes went back to the picture on the screen, to the ears flattened back against her skull, the hard press of her muzzle into her father’s flank. The look in the white wolf’s lava red eyes went beyond murderous—it reminded him of his own father, the time he’d fought off a nogitsune encroaching on their land, threatening his pack. 

When it came to protecting pack, there could be no room for error, and little room for mercy. He was the law, too, but his father wasn’t so far removed from his instincts to pretend he was above them. None of them were. 

Within an hour, he’d sent Peter a reply. 

*****

Peter’s picture hadn’t done him justice. His eyes were brilliant blue, so rich and deep that Stiles wondered for a moment if they would go violet for a moment if he started to shift. 

With days in-between to think it over, to analyze and over analyze, nerves had gotten the better of it. He couldn’t fail to notice, looking again, that the pup pressed up against Peter in the pictures of the rescue was, as he’d initially suspected, not just small, but a coyote. 

A coyote, like his own full moon form. 

The disheartening thought that this was, after all, the only reason Peter would even consider him hung in the balance between embarrassing and cripplingly depressing. He should have had other questions; he should have asked first about the land, but he couldn’t bite his tongue and it came out not long after the introductions had been made, quick and defeated. 

“I just need to know—the reason you’re interested, it’s my full moon form, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and no. I was going to tell you, about Malia,” Peter said. “It seemed the sort of thing to explain in person, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only reason I picked you. If all I wanted for her was a stable coyote shifter influence, I would have had several other options—I could have brought another werecoyote into the pack for that.”

There was relief to that, even though Stiles was reluctant to let himself feel it. He didn’t want to get his hopes up that he was intended as more than the nanny, only to find out once he joined the pack that he was 100% intended to be the nanny.

“You really don’t have an emissary?”

“We really don’t. I dabble a little in magic myself but I have t studied on your level. I’d have been interested in that alone, but with your forms, your grades, your location, and your heritage—I can’t believe you were still available.”

The snort that Stiles let out wasn’t pretty, or professional, but he couldn’t really help it. The heat in his cheeks didn’t help anything, either. “Not that I’m not—I mean I’m flattered, I think, but I have to tell you I think you might have misread—“

“I didn’t.”

“Then you can’t be serious,” Stiles said. The humor was gone; his throat was tight. He hated saying it, and hated more that he must have let himself believe for half a second to have so keenly felt the fresh shock of _well that settles it; you must be the nanny_. “You can’t be, because—look, my dad? Anyone would have wanted my dad.” He had the conviction of both pride and truth, his hand held up to count down on his fingers. “Secretary bird, hyena, maned wolf. Have you ever _seen _a secretary bird, or a beta shift of an enfield with that form? He could put holes in steel with those claws; no one wants to fuck with that—excuse the language but—“

“I’m not offended; say it all you want.” The warmth of his amusement reached Peter’s eyes. Stiles stomach traitorously flipped. 

“I’m just trying to get you to picture it; he’s impressive.” Stiles’ tongue felt heavy, the truth hard to push out no matter how many times his parents and his therapist and teachers had all told him not to be ashamed. “That’s what you want. You want a fucking cassowary or at least a vulture or something; you want talons and power, not a 1 and a ½ ounce elf owl with kitten claws.”

His voice trailed to a mutter by the end, dragged down by the effort of saying it out loud. Years ago, the first time he’d shifted had been such a shock. He’d dropped so low to the ground it hardly seemed possible, but he could remember looking up through unfamiliar eyes as his father reached down to scoop him up, holding him easily in one big hand. He’d grown a little since then, but elf owls maxed out at around 6 inches. A little growth didn’t really matter; he was still a goddamn feathery mouse.

“Stiles, let me ask you something—and I want you think about this.” Raising his hand, Peter’s claws extended slowly, long and thick and sharp. The flare of red in his eyes was nothing like Stiles’ mother’s had been—where hers was dark his was bright, almost raspberry sharp. “Do I look like I need protection?”

“I mean, no, but every alpha—“

“_Every_ alpha can take care of themselves. The myth that we need an enfield for protection is ludicrous; you don’t buy a German Shepherd to watch your back door when you already have a war dog—no offense.”

“None taken.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t buy a German Shepherd,” Peter said, a lilt to his voice that tickled Stiles skin with something that felt like hope, and more than hope. His eyes were so bright, only just beginning to fade. “I don’t need you to fight my battles, but I do need you to help me avoid them, and to be clever enough to fight _with_ me on the occasions that we need to. I don’t _need_ brawn; what I need is someone clever, as quick with their mind as they are with their teeth—and I don’t think I’ll have the chance to do much better than John Stilinski’s son who hasn’t even been given a chance to prove himself after graduation, but has instead been spending his time getting far too lost in his father’s shadow. You’re too talented to be lost there—and I know your father would agree.”

He would, and Stiles knew it. In all honesty, the strangeness of someone other than his father insisting he deserved a chance was real, and intense. At any moment, he’d look up to find the floor had become the ceiling and he was dreaming, stapling papers to his father’s desk upside down or some other bizarre dream oddity. At any moment, he was going to wake up less than a week back in time, and pick up his phone, and check the Available Enfield Registry app, and see nothing. 

Stiles rubbed his thumb along the edge of the file in his lap, so fast he gave himself paper cuts that healed, and reopened, and healed, and reopened. He could see Peter sniff at the scent of blood, soft and subtle. 

“The first three people that you killed, the Argents,” Stiles said, wanting it out in the open, and feeling bold. If this was happening, he could afford to ask. If he was dreaming, it wouldn’t matter. “They said it was pack defense, but I couldn’t find much of a record—“

“There were details kept quiet, for privacy—but you’re going to be pack if you accept my offer, so I don’t mind telling you. You’ll need to know. Gerard, Molly, and Kate were all Christopher’s family.” Peter settled back in his chair, going so still Stiles could barely see him breathe. “My mate.”

“Oh.” It shouldn’t have been that sharp of a disappointment, not for a man he didn’t know, but it twisted in Stiles gut like an arrow. “I didn’t know—“

“You wouldn’t ; we aren’t together. We haven’t been for a long time,” Peter said, and it was so smooth, so even. Whatever he felt about it, Stiles didn’t know him well enough to read it. “His father objected to the two of us; Chris stood up for us, and his father beat him within an inch of his life.” 

It was horrible, so fucking horrible, and still, Peter’s voice hadn’t changed. It didn’t matter; Stiles could feel the steel strength of it, as strongly as if teeth pressed to his chest, carried on the air with a story that wasn’t really his to know. 

“He intended for him to die; he intended for me to find him—he didn’t expect me to heal him, but then, he has a rather…dismal view of our kind.” Peter leaned forward, closing the distance. They had sat close across from each other already; when he shifted forward, his clasped hands almost brushed the file on Stiles’ knees. “What do you think I did, then? What would you do, for your family? For your father?” The red that had almost phased out flared back in spokes, dizzyingly beautiful blending with blue. “What sort of a mate would I have been if I let that stand?” 

The noblest part of Stiles wanted to be repulsed—and that part existed, but it wasn’t dominant. It wasn’t even strong enough to keep his heart from racing with anticipating for an act that had long since taken place, vengeance that wasn’t his to take. It was too close to the full moon—he could feel the coyote under his skin, twisting, yapping that he would have _tasted_ them. He would have made them sorry. 

Stiles swallowed, a shudder skating over his skin when in the moment, he could have sworn he tasted blood. “I know why you did it—but he doesn’t, does he? That’s why you said I won’t see him. He left.”

“He knows why, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgiven me—or he has, and doesn’t want to. Either way, yes, he left, and he hasn’t been back. He hasn’t severed the pack bond, either, but I don’t anticipate seeing him any time soon. Likely never again—but he’s alive. If he holds that against me, so be it.” 

Peter’s hands extended, palms up, his eyebrows raised in question. “So, I have a mate, and I don’t, not in _this _life that I have now. I have a daughter, and I never had the chance to be a father. I have a pack that mostly isn’t family, but now are the only family I have—and I have land, and no enfield to protect it. Do you think you can help me with that?”

It wasn’t hard to decide, even knowing that his father would be dubious, even knowing it meant leaving his mother’s pack, breaking the last tie he had to her, and forging something new. It wasn’t hard—not even when he nodded his agreement, and shook Peter’s hand, and felt the whisper of a thought in the back of his mind like the fluttering of a distant breeze that the land wasn’t all they could share between them. 

After all, Peter himself had said he didn’t have a mate, not really. 

Locked in the cage of his ribs until the sun went down, the coyote chattered, ever eager, and overflowing with curiosity. 


End file.
